Saturday, 26 January 2013

I had a fantastic week on an Arvon course. It is pricy though. You can win a week with this free to enter competition. Tempting.

Win £500, plus a place on an Arvon writing course of your choice

Enter a short story (for adults) of no more than
2,000 words, on the theme of 'freedom' and email it to shortstorycompetition@bloomsbury.com with "WAYB13 competition" as the subject line.

Deadline: 15 February 2013

The Arvon Foundation runs four historic writing houses in the UK,
where published writers lead week-long residential courses. Covering a
diverse range of genres, from poetry and fiction to screenwriting and
comedy, Arvon courses have provided inspiration to thousands of people
at all stages of their writing lives. Find out more and book a course
online at www.arvonfoundation.org

All entries must be original unpublished prose of 2,000 words or fewer.

Thursday, 24 January 2013

Laois have a Tyrone Guthrie bursary which I highly recommend and covet.

Laois County Council Arts Service – Awards
and Opportunities | Call for Applicants
Closing date: 28th February
Laois County Council Arts Service invites applications for the following
awards and opportunities to individuals/groups and organizations from County
Laois.

- Arts Act Grants 2013
Provision has been made by Laois
County Council for the payment of grants to arts organisations and individuals
who meet the artistic and financial criteria set down by Laois County Council
and who provide adequate information on their proposed activities. Maximum
amount payable will not exceed €1000.

- Tyrone Guthrie Residency Bursary Awards 2013
A Bursary
is available to enable a Laois artist to spend one week working at the Tyrone
Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan. The bursary is open to artists in all fields
and is selected on previous achievements and project/s in hand.
In 2013 a
special Bursary for Printmakers is available and will enable two print artists
to spend a week sharing and working in the new Print Studio at the Tyrone
Guthrie Centre. One of the artists must be an experienced printmaker and
preferably a member of a recognised print studio.

- Artists in Schools Scheme 2013
Grants are available for
artists’ residencies in schools, to include all art forms. This scheme gives
primary and post primary schools the opportunity to select and work with
professional artists and explore new arts media.

Details and application forms regarding the above schemes are available on
request from: The Arts Office, Laois County Council, Áras an Chontae,
Portlaoise, Co. Laois. Telephone: 057 8674342 email: artsoff@laoiscoco.ie or can
be downloaded from the website: www.laois.ie.

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Westmeath County Council Arts Grants 2013.

Individual Artists Bursaries

This fund provides funding to individual professional artists based
in Westmeath who earn a proportion of their annual income through their
artistic endeavours. Westmeath County Council will offer bursaries, each
year, in respect of the professional development of individual
professional artists practicing in any of the artistic disciplines
outlined in the County Arts plan.

Arts in Community Scheme

The Arts in Context Residency scheme provides specific project
funding to artists to enable them to work with any school or community
group for arts projects across disciplines. Funding issued by Westmeath
County Council will go directly to pay the artists fees and the school
or group must supply and materials required for the project. This scheme
is to encourage meaningful collaboration between a selected group of
individuals and an artist working on a particular project over a
particular duration of time and to allow the group an opportunity to
engage with an artist directly on a specific project. This scheme gives
employment to an artist working with a group over a given period and it
allows the group to gain specific skills and expertise in the area of
the arts.

Arts Act Grants

Westmeath County Council offers grant aid to community, voluntary or
amateur arts groups or organisations, which will stimulate public
interest in the arts, promote the knowledge, appreciation and practice
of the arts or assist in improving the standards of the arts. In this
Act the arts are defined as painting, sculpture, architecture, music,
film, drama, dance, literature, design in industry and the fine arts and
applied arts generally.

Saturday, 19 January 2013

It's grants season. Do you have a project or perhaps education requirement that could use the extra cash? Your local authority have money for that exact purpose, supporting artists. There are quite a few I've found and I'll post them up over the next few days.
And if you find any more, let me know.

Note that the funds are even more limited so make a strong case. They like community engagement for example.And toot your horn.

Offaly County Council Arts Act Grants for
2013
Applications are now invited by Offaly County Council from community groups
and individuals involved in the arts for funding for projects in 2013.

The grant scheme is open to organisations such as drama and musical groups,
town bands, choirs, voluntary community organisations and individual artists
proposing projects within the community.
Funding is limited under this scheme and priority will be given to specific
projects which are innovative, produce maximum community impact and provide
professional arts and cultural experiences and applications should not be made
without thought given to the above goals.

Application forms and guidelines can be downloaded from www.offaly.ie/arts
or requested by email from arts@offalycoco.ie or over the phone on 05793
57400.

The closing date for all applications is Friday February 15th 2013 at
3pm.

Friday, 18 January 2013

Wednesday, 16 January 2013

Synesthesia is a neurological condition whereby stimulation of one sense is jumbled up in the brain to create the effect of another sense.

Or as Wikipedia says,

a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway

So a person with Colour Synesthesia preceives numbers or letters as having an inherent colour.
5 could be purple or D could be black
Some have it from sounds so a French horn could be light green or a high soprano, white, sometimes with movement too.

Another one that is new to me is perceiving letters as personality types, e.g. U is pleasant but unexciting, F is frazzled, nervous.

Why is this relevant to writers, emerging or otherwise?

Synesthesia has been a source of inspiration for artists, composers, poets, novelists, and digital artists since the Greeks (the ancient ones, not the bankrupts of Europe).

When you are describing something, in a poem or fiction, dialogue or whatever, spice up that description by using a synesthetic adjective.

The artists Kandinksy was a synesthete, as is David Hockney, the writers Joanne Harris and Nabakov, musician Duke Ellington, Physicist and personal hero of mine Richard Feynman, composers Lizst and Rimsky-Korsakov.

I know of at least one Irish writer who has some aspects of it. Anyone reading this?

Monday, 14 January 2013

The Galway Rape Crisis Centre in association with Over the Edge are now accepting entries for the Dead Good Poetry Competition. The competition is open to all original and unpublished poetry and will be judged by Kevin Higgins and Clare Daly TD.

The winner will receive €300, while the second and third prize winners will receive €200 and €100 respectively.

The entry fee is €10 per poem and entrants may submits as many poems as they wish.

Poems may be sent to:
Dead Good Poetry,
"The Lodge"
Forster Court,
Galway

Saturday, 12 January 2013

This sounds like an interesting competition. Note that the fee is to cover the administration and maybe also to fund the project but there's no mention of cash for the prize, just the glory.

Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust is seeking entries for an
exciting new poetry competition.

CRITERIA:

poems
entered in the competition should be no more than 30 lines long.

They must be
the original work of the entrant.

Poems previously published in magazines or
poetry collections are eligible.

Do not put your name on the
poems; please include your contact details on a separate sheet.

PRIZE

the
winner will have her or his poem published and displayed on the Arts Corridor of
University Hospital Galway as part of the 2013 Poems For Patience.
The poems after exhibition on the Arts Corridor
are then displayed in waiting areas throughout Galway University
Hospitals.

the
winner will be invited to read her of his winning poem at the launch of the 2013
Poems For Patience at the Cúirt International Festival of
Literature in April 2013.

the
winner will be provided with accommodation in Galway for one night during the
2013 Cúirt International Festival of Literature

the
winner will be given a copy of their poem printed as a Poems for Patience
poster

the
winner will be asked to submit six poems for consideration for a Featured Reader
at the Over The Edge: Open Reading series in Galway City Library.

ENTRY FEE: to
enter one poem the fee is €10. If you enter two or more poems the entry fee is
€7.50 per poem i.e. to enter two poems it costs €15, to enter three €22.50 and
so on.

Payment should be made by cheque or postal order payable to
Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust.

Entries should be sent by post to Margaret Flannery, Arts
Director, Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust, Galway University Hospitals,
University Hospital, Newcastle Road, Galway. THE CLOSING DATE is Friday, March 1st
2013.

The
competition judge is Kevin Higgins.

Poems For Patience is a long running series which over the past
decade has featured poems by leading Irish and international poets such as
Seamus Heaney, Philip Schultz, Michael Longley, Vona Groarke, Jane Hirschfield,
Tess Gallagher and many more.

They have lots of advice on layout and how to structure a radio play. The writer should be Irish or resident in Ireland.

The main advice I have is
- Listen to some radio plays and get an idea of what works and what doesn't
- Read it out loud!
- Don't have loads of characters - too confusing
- Grab your listeners early and don't let go

Tuesday, 8 January 2013

A rather huge name for this project...set up for The Gathering, another huge name.
Guess who's not in it? Me. I wonder if there are any immigrant voices represented in this insight into contemporary Ireland?

Worth signing up for anyway.

(Forgive the high falutin' language. It reads as if it were written for the American market.)

To
celebrate Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union, this exciting digital post
can be sent to you until July 2013. Twenty-six poems and twenty–six video shorts
will offer you a unique insight into the creativity of contemporary
Ireland.

Ireland’s poets are famed
around the world, and our contemporary artists are renowned for their creativity
and vision. Each poem is a taste of the best of Irish poetry now, while the
short videos (none are longer than three minutes) offer a parallel way of
looking at things. Brought together, the results will intrigue you, move you,
and maybe make you look at the world in a different way.

The Poetry
Project was set up by the Kinsale Arts Festival in partnership with Poetry
Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy. The poems were selected by Gerard
Smyth, Poetry Editor of The Irish Times and Joseph Woods, Director of
Poetry Ireland; and the video works were selected and commissioned by Gemma
Tipton, from the Kinsale Arts Festival and Patrick T Murphy, Director of the
Royal Hibernian Academy.

The entire project will be shown together in a unique
premiere event at the Kinsale Arts Festival July 5th to 14th 2013

Submission Fees: €10/£10/$10 for up to three submissions; school
entries: €2. If you would like to pay via PayPal use the button below
and quote your receipt number or transaction reference with your entry
submission.

Friday, 4 January 2013

In the introduction to her anthology of clothes poems Out of Fashion (Faber,
2004), Carol Ann Duffy wrote ’[these poems] examine, in their different
ways, how we dress or undress, how we cover up or reveal, and how
clothes, fashion and jewellery are both a necessary and luxurious, a
practical and sensual, a liberating and repressing part of our lives. I
hope that the anthology forms an entertaining dialogue between the two
arts of poetry and fashion’.

This push and pull between cover up and
revelation, necessity and luxury is what we’d like to see in your
clothes poems for Magma 56, whether you’re writing about dress uniforms
or haute couture, morning suits or suits of armour. Tell us about your
little black dresses and your lucky pants, your wedding dresses and your
weeding gloves and we’ll send the best of your poems down the catwalk
of Magma 56.

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

The White Review Short Story Prize is an annual short story
competition for emerging writers. Made possible by the generous support
of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, the prize awards £2,500 to the
best piece of short fiction by a writer resident in the UK and Ireland
who has yet to secure a publishing deal.

The judges will be looking for short stories that explore and expand
the possibilities of the form. We encourage submissions from all
literary genres, and there are no restrictions on theme or subject
matter. We would only emphasise that the prize was founded to reward
ambitious, imaginative and innovative approaches to creative writing.

In addition to the £2,500 prize, the winner will be published in a quarterly print issue of The White Review. The winner will have the chance to meet with jury member and literary
agent Karolina Sutton to discuss their writing, plans for future work
and possible routes to publication.
Up to seven shortlisted writers will have their work published online and receive feedback from the editors of The White Review.